Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, 17 researchers filed a complaint Sept. 16 against NIH, accusing the agency of infringing their First Amendment rights by allegedly rejecting funding to grants with certain words or phrases.
The proposed class-action lawsuit includes 13 named and four unnamed researchers who allege abrupt terminations of their grant funding for being “DEI-related.” To secure the remaining funding in yearslong research grants, they said their NIH Program Officers recommended the removal of words and phrases such as “gender,” “equity,” “racism,” “underrepresented minorities,” “Black,” “Brown,” “health disparities,” “climate change” and “transgender.”
One plaintiff said NIH requested she change references to “policy restrictions” and “pregnant people” to “policy changes” and “pregnant women” in a grant titled, “Time Sensitive Research on Barriers to Pregnancy Care.”
Some plaintiffs said “NIH’s current screening and censoring of grants” prompted them to withhold submitting funding applications.
Plaintiffs are seeking to halt the alleged term-search process. Since the case was filed as a class action, a ruling for the plaintiffs would extend to any researcher whose work was affected. The scope is unknown, but a summer 2025 analysis from the Association of American Medical Colleges said the U.S. had terminated 2,282 NIH grants worth $3.8 billion. Last year, a judge directed NIH to restore hundreds of grants related to race, gender and sexual orientation.
When asked for comment, NIH told Becker’s it does not comment on pending litigation.
